Cate Blanchett has launched a new non-profit organisation designed to help artists and individuals stop AI companies from using their work, voices and likenesses without consent.
Cate Blanchett has launched a non-profit organisation aimed at helping artists and the public prevent AI companies from using their work and identities without permission.
The Oscar-winning actor announced the launch of RSL Media on Tuesday (12.05.26), warning that AI technologies are developing “essentially unchecked and unregulated”.
Co-founded with technology executive Nikki Hexum, the organisation plans to introduce a “human consent standard” that allows people to formally declare whether AI systems can use their creative work, likeness or personal identity.
The system will apply to films, books, music, artwork, photography, voices, facial likenesses, fictional characters, names, logos and trademarks.
Users will be able to set permissions as “allowed”, “allowed with terms”, or “prohibited”, with those instructions translated into machine-readable signals designed to be recognised by AI systems before content is used or scraped.
Blanchett said in a statement: “AI technologies are expanding rampantly, essentially unchecked and unregulated. In order for humans to remain in front of these technologies, consent must be the first consideration.
“RSL Media is a simple, effective and free solutions-based technology for facilitating and activating consent. It’s also the industry’s first practical solution where people everywhere, not just public figures, can assert control over how their work is used by AI.”
A free public registry is due to launch in June, allowing users to verify identities, register creative works and encode permissions into formats readable by AI systems. People can already reserve consent IDs through the organisation’s website.
The initiative has received backing from several major entertainment figures, including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Dame Emma Thompson and Dame Helen Mirren.
Thompson said: “Of course artists and cultural creatives will inevitably be involved with AI. At the moment, however, AI is merely stealing from us all. This is an urgent and essential initiative. It’s also eminently doable, so let’s do it without delay.”
Mirren added: “The one is an extension of the imagination, and the other a block to imagination, at the same time being crass theft.”
Director Steven Soderbergh also backed the project, calling it “a solution to a very serious problem”.
Cate Blanchett launches non-profit organisation to tackle AI image theft
